Taste Your Coffee Thin Lips Once More
by Tricki
Summary: The first time they kiss they are both drunk beyond description.
1. Winston, You Are Drunk

**AN:** They keep on coming. That wasn't meant to sound quite so wrong. My bad.

Spoilers: None in this chapter.

Set: Ten years pre-season 3

* * *

_Taste Your Coffee Thin Lips Once More_

**1. **

**"Winston, you are drunk, and what's more, you are disgustingly drunk."**

The first time they kiss they are both drunk beyond description. It's the final night of the Party Conference, and everyone has let their hair down. Malcolm Tucker is junior enough at this point in time to still do the same. Some bright spark in the Party (sadly Malcolm thinks the man in question is in line to be the next Foreign Secretary) has rented a karaoke machine. There is little Malcolm Tucker detests more than karaoke, but tonight he is in good spirits. Conference has been a roaring success, the PM is exalted, and the Deputy PM has bought him a pint. Ten years ago if Malcolm could have predicted this moment, he would feel very comfortable about the course of his life indeed. While he's pondering all of this, one of the recently elected MPs stumbles onto the stage, laughing. She's attractive enough. Not particularly tall, but a nicely proportioned woman of around thirty with mad brown hair and a nice smile. After a minute of studying her and scrolling through his mental rolodex of their hundreds of bloody MPs it clicks that she's Nicola Murray. Semi safe seat, ran a reasonable campaign, not the brightest MP he's ever met but not the dullest either.

Just when he is turning back to his drink, the newbie on the semi-safe margin bursts into You're So Vain, and Malcolm spins back to her in an instant.

It's not that her singing is bad; she's quite good actually. It's that she has opened with "Malcolm walked into the Party like he was walking onto a yacht. His pen strategically tucked behind one ear, his tie was a Windsor knot. And all the MEPs prayed that he wouldn't hate them, he wouldn't hate them but, Malcolm's so vain, he probably thinks Conf'rence is about him. Malcolm's so vain!"

He watches her, rapt. Normally he would be fuming over something like this, but she is hilarious and he finds he can't help joining in with the room's laughter. Those sitting near him visibly relax at his amusement, but even while he laughs he cannot work out what he's done to this random MP to warrant this. He's met her maybe twice for a sum total of four minutes.

When she stumbles off stage with a little curtsey, Malcolm intends to flag her down. Instead she sidles straight over to him, collapses against the bar and says "Do you do mojitos? I need six."

"Thirsty, are yeh?" Malcolm queries, raising an eyebrow as his eyes flit over her garishly loud green dress. Malcolm Tucker prides himself on being able to figure people out, and she is already nothing like he expected when he was first introduced to her at a campaign launch event.

"It was a bet." She informs him giddily. His look of incomprehension spurs her on. "The song. Dan pox face Miller promised he'd buy my next drink if I sang a song about you, so I decided to stock up. Unctuous little shit can afford it."

Suddenly Malcolm thinks he has her all wrong. Anyone who finds Dan Miller unctuous is clearly someone he agrees with. And she's really quite quick with her words, coming up with a whole new set of lyrics in ten minutes just for some mojitos. "Nicola Murray, right?"

"Yes indeed. And if you've ever forgotten my name before I'm sure you won't be doing it again."

"No, that performance was certainly... memorable."

"I was in the choir at Oxford."

Malcolm laughs and downs the dregs of his pint. "Of course yeh fucking were."

Nicola slides a mojito across the bar to him. "Go on, you earned it for me really."

"Is tha' right?"

"Who else would give me enough material for a four minute song without more than a two minute conversation?"

"And here I thought you were a fucking politician. You're supposed to be able to make twenty minute speeches out of thirty second briefings."

"I'm new."

Malcolm raises his mojito and offers it to her. "To the first of many bad excuses you will give me over a long and unimpressive career."

Nicola touches her glass to his before powering through the drink. If she picks up on his insult, she is either indifferent to it or agrees with it. Malcolm doubts it is the latter.

They sit for another twenty minutes, drinking and sniping at each other, before Nicola decides that actually, she's quite pissed and she is in need of her bed. Unfortunately, and she comes to this revelation with peals of laughter, she cannot remember where in the hotel her room is. Malcolm, already trolleyed himself, finds this almost as amusing as Nicola does, and seeks to assist her on her quest back to her room. After much stumbling and laughing they eventually they locate it. Ordinarily Malcolm would not let himself be so off-guard with one of the Members, but she's new and small-fry, and actually not a completely vacuous bore, so he's taking his entertainment where he can get it. Nicola's shoes (sensible court shoes that should not have caused her as much grief as she claimed) are dangling limply from her fingers as Malcolm fumbles with the key-card. There is the beginning of a ladder forming under the left heel of her stocking.

"Christ these things are as fucking useful as a nun's twat." The Scot mumbles. After six attempts he kneels down before the hole, regulating his actions as tightly as he can. Nicola throws her head against the wall.

"Fancy that. The big bad Malcolm Tucker kneeling for me and I'm not even a Minister yet. Or do you only give blowjobs to the PM?"

"Oi, fuck off, Murray! Do yeh want into yer room or not? Because I'd quite happily get up off the floor and leave you dribblin' in the hallway all night."

"I don't fucking dribble." She frowns, itching the top of her left foot with the toes of her right one. Heartless Malcolm Tucker with the tongue that's stopped the nation thinks this is one of the most endearing things he's seen in his life. And it scares him.

"I bet you don't snore." She says, apropos of seemingly nothing and nudging him with one of her feet. Either because Nicola is stronger than she thinks or Malcolm is drunker than he expected, the action causes the Scot to fall sideways. Nicola is laughing hysterically, and Malcolm is almost too dazed to react. Dropping her shoes, Nicola very carefully bends forward to help pull him up. Sadly she is not careful enough, because she ends up sprawled over his chest.

In a moment of reckless idiocy, Nicola leans down and presses her lips to Malcolm's. She is demanding and beseeching all at once, and Malcolm gladly opens his mouth to her. She tastes like cheap rum and lime and mint. She tastes foreign and wrong, but she is warm and pliant, and _god_, so inviting. Were it not for the burning of his wedding ring on his finger, he thinks he may actually find a way to open the fucking door with this useless little swiping device, tear her horrible green dress off her appealingly olive toned skin and spend the night learning all the many different flavours of her body. But his ring is there, and it is burning his flesh even while his blood is rushing to his groin. He runs a hand over her shoulder, and she knows that he is telling her this is enough. She rolls off of him, lying on her back in the middle of the hotel corridor, and begins to laugh again.

The ease between them isn't quite restored, but is close enough, and Malcolm will take it.

After some more fumbling he manages to get the door open, and while he presses her key-card into her palm he looks at her pensively, mumbling "Goodnight, Mojito Murray."

"Goodnight Mister Fucker."

As soon as the door has banged shut behind her, he lifts his hand to his lips and attempts to wipe her off of him, but the taste of mint and lime is still on his tongue. Part of him wonders what she really tastes like; just Nicola, sans a litre or so of alcoholic beverages. Malcolm snaps himself back into reality and banishes all thoughts of Nicola Murray. By the morning the encounter is a foggy memory, and he is glad of this.

He does not touch a mojito for at least twelve years.


	2. Now They Have The Press

**2.**

**"In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press."**

Nicola does not remember the first time Malcolm kisses her when he is sober. Malcolm is eternally grateful for this.

Nicola's interview with the Telegraph had been a disaster, even by Nicola standards. Malcolm, very unwisely, had utterly offloaded at the journalist interviewing her. Not about his journalistic practices, but about Nicola's inability to not fuck up. He may have asked why she wouldn't just die before bailing up said journalist and threatening his every orifice until he was sure his comments wouldn't be attributed. Even Lord Malcolm of Fuckoffideen was unable to enact retrospective off-the-record status.

So now here he is, sitting in the Opposition's favourite haunt listening to Nicola fucking Murray lamenting her life on a Wednesday night, trying to resist the urge to commit suicide. The problem with today, from Malcolm's perspective, is that Nicola was fucking worse than she should have been. He'd sat there, watching her come further and further unstuck, partly wishing he could intervene and partly wishing he could set the whole fucking building on fire and just be done with it.

He may call her useless, but Jesus shitting Christ, she's not as fucking retarded as she came off today, and somehow it's always Totally Fucking Retarded Nicola who makes it into mass media rather than Only Slightly Retarded Nicola with whom he works most of the time. Herein lies the uncomfortable problem, the cause of his frustration. It's not that she always puts the wrong foot forward, simply that she only puts the wrong foot forward when it's important that she doesn't.

Malcolm muses over this while nursing a Fanta and watching Nicola power through yet another glass of the cheap house white. She complains that it is horrible whenever she receives a fresh glass, and he receives no sensible answer when he asks her why she doesn't buy something decent. There is little logic he can find in "Because you drink nice wine because you want nice wine and you drink shit wine when you would like the universe to open and swallow you whole."

"Fuck you're melodramatic." Malcolm mumbles with an unsympathetic eye-roll.

"Well you're a fucking bastard but I don't whinge about that." Nicola remarks, glaring at him out of the corner of her eye.

"Yeah, because you're too fucking busy whining abou' everything else. 'Oh my husband hates me, my children are the fucking spawn of Satan, oh boo hoo, I'm the worst fucking Leader who had the misfortune of being born.' Fucking grow up, Nic'la. Yer bit's gettin' old."

"There's a fucking club, Malcolm." Nicola says, voice thickening with the threat of tears. "I am so shit at this job there's a fucking club celebrating my incompetence. Hail fucking Murray." She shakes her head and rests her forehead against her hand. It's a gesture of defeat which used to be rare when she was first appointed to Cabinet, but over the years he's watched it become a more and more regular part of her paralinguistic repertoire. Malcolm Tucker feels no modicum of guilt for this. Not for the slump in her shoulders, nor the tense threading of her fingers through her now neatly cropped brown hair, nor the tightness in her throat. He feels no guilt for her train-wreck of an interview, either, only vague regret at letting her do it, and intense frustration that she can't just be a little bit fucking less of a walking clusterfuck.

"Hail fucking Murray is right." She looks at him murderously and he finally unleashes everything that's been swirling through his head. "Look, if yeh don't like having the twats over there takin' the piss yeh should've stayed on the backbench, righ'? But you didn't. You ran in a mammoth fucking leadership contest and somehow you fucking won it. Skin of yer teeth, but you're the fucking Leader of a massive political machine, and if you want to fucking sit here wallowing, that's fine, but some part of that tiny, frizz-haired mind of yers has to know that there's a direct correlation between you sittin' here blubberin' and you bein' a totally fucking useless Leader."

She nods at his side, head still against the heel of her hand, eyes clamped shut. He watches her, taking note of the hint of a tear that creeps from the corner of her eye.

Malcolm casts his gaze around the pub, taking note of anyone who might be paying them attention. The pub is one of several locales in Westminster where journalists and politicians have a gentleman's arrangement that nothing that happens within these walls can be reported on, and nothing that happens in the alleyway and car park behind the pub can have names attributed to it, but most of the decent journalists consider the alley and park part of the exclusion zone.

It's not really the journalists he's worried about, though; it's the Ben Swains of the world, the Dan Millers. The people who will tactically use things against her rather than write articles in trashy newspapers which will be forgotten tomorrow.

The pub is designed with an oval shaped bar towards the back. It's an aesthetically pleasing but spatially inefficient design which thankfully has allowed him to tuck them somewhere towards the wall, facing the back. Nicola had been in a distinctly 'flop on the bar and cry' mood, despite Malcolm's protestations that the corner booth was more appropriate for a post interview wake. There are sometimes even Malcolm can't muster the energy to argue with her.

"Why'd yeh want to be a vet?" Malcolm queries, hoping to stop her wallowing before she descends into actual tears and makes a scene. He's never seen her fully cry, so he's worried from a contingency point of view more than anything else, but the risk is always there, especially when she's this taught with tension.

"I wanted to help animals." She answers. No nonsense, no elaboration. A simple fact. She wanted to help, to alleviate suffering. It doesn't surprise him. Despite her near total lack of ability she really does have, and it took Malcolm a long time to realise this because it's quite far from his normal assessment of politics, a genuine desire to improve people's lot, and that it something he respects.

"What changed your mind?" His query is genuine, even if Nicola is inclined to read a veiled assertion that she'd be better off as a vet into it. She turns her head, looking at him on an awkward horizontal angle. "Because I didn't like the idea of putting them down when I couldn't fix them."

"So, politics because it didn't involve personally performing euthanasia. Not the worst reason I've ever heard, and that, is fucking depressing."

"Can we just write all of today off as 'fucking depressing'?"

"Every day's a fucking write off with you, Nic'la." Malcolm snipes.

Nicola sighs heavily and turns her head back into her hand. "Good-o."

"Alrigh', finish yer fucken wine. Yeh've wallowed enough for one night." Malcolm is dialling her driver while he says all this, ordering her car immediately.

"Fine." Nicola replies, swigging the dregs of her wine before sliding off her barstool, shrugging on her coat and following him out the back door of the pub. Malcolm doubts she would be quite so pliable if she'd stopped drinking forty minutes ago.

The rain is misting lightly, and Malcolm curses under his breath when he sees that her car isn't there. Once upon a time she would've leant lightly against him as they waited, before the trust between them began to slowly crack and crumble. He can feel it. She feels less like he's less on her side now than she used to, and she was honestly always a little dubious on that fact.

Good. Part of Malcolm grumbles. She's finally fucking learnin' something.

It had been a sign of defiance as much as anything, though, hadn't it? That light body contact the Nicola Murray version of humming 'Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf' under her breath with the clear indication that she'd not been afraid of him. Of course to some extent, like all the rest of them, she is and always has been a little, but she has been more willing to fight him than others right from the start. Malcolm liked that in the beginning, even if he was well aware it would make his life harder in the long run. Now he's starting to worry that her fight is ebbing away from her, and more to the point, he worries that he is at least partly to blame. When this article is printed on Friday she's going to recognise his phraseology immediately. She's going to be both furious and upset with him for his tirade. The trust will continue to erode.

Of course this isn't a personal issue for Malcolm. Not at all. The issue is that she will become harder to control the less she trusts him, but in fairness rhetorically asking a journalist why your Leader won't just die is reasonably solid grounds for not being trusted anymore.

Out of the corner of his eye Malcolm studies her. The hair at the nape of her neck is curling into little flat ringlets in the misty rain; the neat bob which requires approximately half a bottle of serum per day to make it even vaguely resemble something that could be printed on a banknote is waving at the ends and developing flyaways at the roots. Malcolm almost wants to smile at how infuriatingly Nicola she looks right now. Almost DoSAC Nicola. Almost the woman who came in bubbling with social mobility before the notion of spending money on her portfolio was well and truly beaten out of her. Part of him wants to know what happened to her, the woman who had some good ideas even if she had no concept of how to execute them, but really Malcolm already knows. He was one of the ones who helped beat her into whatever she is now: this insecure blathering idiot who burnt her fucking mouth on a cup of coffee in the middle of an interview. God, he wanted her to be better than this. All those times when she's challenged him and stood up to him made him think maybe she even could be. Alack the day Malcolm Tucker gave someone the benefit of the doubt.

Malcolm doesn't realise that he's shifted from idly considering her out of the corner of his eye to outright staring at her.

"What?" Nicola demands, eyes narrowing as if she is steeling herself for a fight.

"I don't know what you're talkin' about at the best of times, Nic'la, let alone when you're trolleyed."

"You know exactly what I mean. That fucking look! What is that fucking look? Most of the time I'm pretty good at picking up on outright disdain, but sometimes you look at me and I'm not sure if you want to throw me in front of a bus or - " Largely because of the amount of alcohol she's consumed, Nicola Murray had actually been well on her way to blurting out the words 'fucking kiss me'. She is interrupted by Malcolm Tucker doing exactly that. He pulls her to him with force, and a little 'unf' escapes her. The motion is jarring for a body that already feels somewhat like she's on a life raft in a storm. Malcolm silencing her is never something she takes pleasure in, but when he does it with his mouth, Nicola is ashamed to say she has very few objections.

Her tongue is imprecise and indecisive against his. She is not demanding or hungry as he expects she would be when she's at her best, as she hinted she would be that night all those years ago. Her mouth is laced with cheap wine, and it clashes horribly with the intensely sugary remnants of his Fantas. Nicola slips her arms under his overcoat, clinging to his sides as much to keep herself upright as to gain a little warmth, a little intimacy. Malcolm curses her stupid black trench coat for the barrier it creates between his body and her skin. She is cocooned in gabardine and a cashmere scarf which (she takes no end of pleasure in reminding him) originated in his homeland. Just as Malcolm is burying his fingers in her hair and pulling her against him harder, Nicola shoves off him as hard as she can manage, spins on her heel, braces against the rough brick wall and vomits violently. The Scot rakes a hand over his face, wondering once again exactly what in Christ's name he's gotten himself into.

Malcolm does not do the gentlemanly thing and hold her hair back or support her forehead, instead he does something much more politically astute: he turns away from her and scans the area for lurking journalists, punters on their mobile phones, any sign of life. The last thing he needs is vomiting Nicola plastered across every major news outlet because someone nearby is on fucking Twitter; god knows her electoral prospects are bad enough without snogging staffers and vomiting in alleyways. While he does so he spreads his hand across the small of her back, fingers taking in her damp coat. He is not actively seeking to comfort her. Not really. It's a reaction to her proximity and her persistent heaving and nothing more. This is something Malcolm repeats to himself as his fingers gently rub tiny circles over her. Malcolm's eyes finally land on her car, sitting patiently with its headlights on just in front of them. Malcolm has no idea when it pulled up; he imagines he'd been too busy sucking on the Leader of the Opposition's lower lip.

When she rights herself, her face is pulled into that bemused Nicola frown; it would be endearing were it not so frequent to grace her countenance.

"Feel better gettin' that out of yer system?" Malcolm's query is only a little biting, idly disapproving rather than blatantly critical.

"Very much regretting my cheap wine assertion, actually."

Malcolm laughs shortly and drops a hand to the small of her back, directing her to her car. He opens the door for her and pushes her in with little ceremony, watching as she lifts her hand to her head like she might go again. Her breath is toxic, acidic from sick and stale from wine. She is dishevelled and damp, and actually, Malcolm doesn't utterly hate her. He leans into the front of the minivan and mumbles, "None of this goes any further, righ'? Good man."

Nicola's head is lolling back against her seat and she is looking at him with wide-eyed confusion. Reaching across her, Malcolm draws her seatbelt over her body and clips it securely. It's his small concession, a little acknowledgement that he does not actually want her to die at all. She may frustrate him beyond articulation, but part of him tries to keep her safe, where possible. Malcolm knows as soon as the Telegraph hits on Friday and she picks him for the source, she will hate him. Perhaps when that happens he will be able to invoke this moment as some kind of evidence that he is still on her side, or at least wants her to live. His hand finds her cheek gently, and why he can't seem to keep his hands off her is a troubling and potentially disastrous question he totally refuses to answer.

"Now get some rest and don't hack yer guts up in the nice man's car. Alright?"

Once he's sure she's nodded in response, he mumbles "good," and shuts the door with a decisive snap. Malcolm hopes a long walk home in the rain will help him dismiss whatever it is that's going through his mind tonight.

* * *

The next morning is a clear and sunny one - by London standards at least. Nicola has never longed for a typical, gray London day more than at this very moment. She'd allowed herself a politician's version of a sleep in, only arriving at the Norman Shaw at 7:20am, but she still feels like death warmed up, re-frozen, left in the sun to rot, and then thrown back in the fridge to slow the decay. In fact, Nicola is feeling so ill that, while she is aware she has a couch in her office which could offer her rest and comfort, she cannot bring herself to move from her current position slumped over her desk. It is in this position that Malcolm finds her when he is finally granted entrance to her office by Helen at 7:50. The curtains are drawn and the office is largely dark. There are cracks of sunlight coming through in places where one of her staff clearly couldn't quite get the curtains to meet. Although he can see none of Nicola's face under her sheath of hair, she looks like she would not object to euthanasia at this point.

"You loved her as Pukeahontas, now relive the magic with digitally remastered Sleeping Barfy!"

Ordinarily Nicola is sure she would laugh at this, but right now all she can manage is a low groan.

"Do you know why being a vet is better than being the alternative Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?" She mumbles into her arms.

"Because animals don't get shitted off by yer boring arse stories?"

"Because vets are fucking allowed to take the day off when they're hung over."

"D'you know why politicians aren't?"

"Because they're supposed to run the Kingdom, and therefore probably be mature enough not to get paralytic while Parliament's in session?"

Malcolm snorts derisively. "Because most of them are such seasoned fucking alcoholics that they don't fucking get hangovers anymore."

Nicola makes a little mewl of desolation, and Malcolm, in spite of himself, wants to laugh gently at her despair.

"I actually can't remember a fucking thing from last night." Groans the brunette into her desk. "Fuck, I haven't done that in a long time." Malcolm's ears prick up. He'd been wondering when and if his totally sober snogging of her would become a topic of conversation. He might be saved.

"Nothing?"

"After burning my mouth on that stupid fucking cappuccino, I remember going to the Hog and then I remember drinking about three glasses of shitty wine, and then I actually have no idea what happened." Suddenly her voice hardens. "I didn't do anything, did I? Anything that might, you know... Get published or anything?"

"Aside from sexually assaulting that midget, you mean?"

"Fuck off, Malcolm. I'm in agony."

"Well, you heaved up yer guts in the back alley. D'you remember that?"

"I remember the taste in the morning."

"Now that's about as fucken charming as an ageing sex worker with gingivitis."

If Nicola's head weren't pounding as if it were being rammed repeatedly by a lorry, she would lift it and glare at him. As it stands, she is physically incapable of doing so, and this tells Malcolm more than anything else about her current state. More than the drawn curtains and the lying on the desk. That she can't muster the energy to glare at him? That is both serious and of some concern.

Standing before her desk, Malcolm squeezes her shoulder softly and for the first time Nicola's head raises. Not the whole way yet, just a slight tip back so her eyes and nose are visible above her arms. It's not endearing. Not at all. Once he's sure he has her attention he sets a 48 pack of 400mg Ibuprofen tablets on the desk before her. She reaches for them with a look on her face that says he may have just presented her with the Queen's sceptre.

"Back on the horse, alright darlin'?"

"Right. Government to win, JB to destroy." Replies Nicola with new resolve as she accidentally rips the box in her haste to open it. Malcolm is surprised when she dry-swallows four in one go. Surprised and maybe a little alarmed.

"That's my girl."

Malcolm brushes his hand over her shoulder again as he makes to leave, but is halted by Nicola softly calling after him: "Malcolm? I'm not your fucking 'girl'." His lips quirk, though she cannot tell with his back to her; this is the kind of comment that ordinarily would give Malcolm myriad complicated thoughts about the evening before, about her rain-frizzed hair and her not unjustified self-loathing.

Luckily for Malcolm, it takes a very long time indeed for him to be able to consider kissing Nicola Murray without the vivid memory of the smell of her vomit rather souring the idea.


	3. What A Misjudgement

**A/N:** Chapter title is Tony Blair's, Malc and Nicola are the BBCs, the rest belongs to my crazy mind.

Do enjoy!

* * *

**3.**

**"Jesus Christ, Peter, what a misjudgement."**

Of all the people in his life who Malcolm Tucker expects to find on his doorstep tonight, Nicola Murray is arguably the last on the list.

"Look! The Glummy Mummy's come bury Cesar. Fuck off, Nic'la, I'm not in the mood."

Nicola ignores him and pushes past him into his house. "You've just been fucking arrested, Malcolm, I don't think this is the right time to pick a fight."

"You don't get to dictate when I fucking pick fights. Oh, and by the way, get the fuck out of my house."

"Have you eaten anything?" She asks, breezing through his home like it's hers. Malcolm hates how at ease she is in his space. Malcolm completely fucking hates that useless Nicola Murray, whose life he's just utterly fucked over, is breezing through his house like she's going to fix things for him. Most of all Malcolm utterly fucking despises what the sway of her hips elicits in him.

"I'm not joking around here, Nicola. Get out of my fucking house."

"No." Nicola replies calmly as she pores through his pantry. "Because this is the point where you finally fucking implode and someone needs to be here to make sure you don't fucking top yourself in the process."

"As if you give half an ant's shit." Mumbles the Scot darkly.

"I do, actually. I mean, Christ knows why..." Nicola's voice trails off as she examines a packet of pancake mixture that is no less than seven years outside its used by date with a frown. Truth be known, Nicola has spent so little time in her own kitchen since she became Secretary of State all those years ago that she could have far worse.

"What are you in the mood for?" She queries, closing her hand around an unopened packet of linguini.

"How about not being fucking charged with a crime?"

"Yeah, well, you fucked my career, so sadly I have no power to help you in any way that isn't culinary right now."

When she fills and flicks on the kettle, Malcolm finally resigns himself to the fact that she is not going anywhere, regardless of any protestation he may make. They are no longer engaged in a professional relationship, and he has nothing to hold over her anymore. He has no way of manipulating her out of his house short of calling the police, and really, he's had more than enough dealings with the Met this week, and he expects the frequency of his interactions with the police will only increase after today.

Malcolm's kitchen is orderly, aside from the presence of old produce. It is arranged in the most logical manner possible. A woman has not been near it for almost two years, and Nicola is sure this level of organisational precision would have taken place after Lucille left and not before. Lucille's sense of order was more arbitrary than Malcolm's. Alphabetical rather than practicality of access, that sort of thing. Nicola is grateful of the order. It means at no point does she need to ask Malcolm where anything is located; an infinitely helpful fact when the person one is attempting to cook for is currently pondering the best way to remove you from their house. Opening the fridge she discovers that at least he has butter, which surprises her somewhat. He has no cheese that she can see, but he has a healthy supply of Fanta. In fact, he is drinking a bottle of Franta at present, and Nicola can't help but wonder if perhaps there's a dose of vodka in it too. Malcolm has had a day that surely warrants alcohol.

"So far we're up to buttered linguini. Sounds appetising." Nicola remarks with a grimace. Malcolm wants to rail at her, but today he feels like he's had a Hoover attached to every one of his fingers and his fighting spirit has been sucked clean out of him. Maybe most of him has been sucked out. Maybe there was nothing left of the real Malcolm Tucker to remove anymore. Malcolm feels weak and depleted. Malcolm feels that he has spent his life in pursuit of power, considering only the getting of it, the keeping of it, and now he has lost his own. Malcolm wants to curl up in a ball and let himself rest for the first time in more than a decade, but he's worried that years of politics will mean he's incapable of something so... normal.

"I'm not sure I can do this, Nic'la." The words make her jump. He is too soft, too broken. He is unsettling like this, and Nicola doesn't know how to handle Malcolm Tucker when he's being earnest; he so rarely has been with her over the past five years.

"It's just pasta, Malcolm. It's not going to kill you. _Believe _me, if I wanted to kill you I'd do it with my bare fucking hands right now."

"I don't mean the fucking pasta you daft giblet, and by the way, I'd like to see you fucking try. You'd probably end up attacking yer own reflection."

Nicola drops a fistful of linguini into the now boiling water and flicks her eyes over her shoulder, taking in the fatigue in his face. The last time she remembers seeing him quite like this is when Steve Fleming first came back to Tom's office, and that concerns her. Nicola had watched him inches from total self destruction, had borne the emotional brunt of his sacking. Nicola would never voice it in these terms, but her life and Malcolm's have in many ways revolved around one another's for the past two years, and seeing him like this, even though she utterly fucking despises him right now, is complicated for her. Complicated in much the same way it was complicated when he talked her into turning down her job at Yale. On one hand, Nicola wants to find the crashing demise of Señor Malcolm Tucker something worthy of celebration. On the other, she has worked so closely with this man that sometimes she forgets he is a political assassin - let alone _her own_ political assassin. That second hand is the one that makes her feel badly for him, the one that brought her to his door. Those two hands are currently engaged in an arm wrestle between throwing scalding water on him to have done with it, and trying to find something to make the pasta less drab.

"What then?" She asks, crossing back to the pantry in search of herbs or tomato paste.

"I can't fucking be normal again, Nic'la. Christ, I barely survived being out of the loop fer two days when that cunting little ferret Fleming came back."

Nicola considers him evenly, fingers closed around a shaker of parmesan cheese.

"Malcolm..." Her tone is soft, gentle. Malcolm wonders what he's done to earn it after all she's been put through for the last few weeks. "Look, maybe we should worry about trying to keep you out of gaol before we start talking about how you'll cope without an official BlackBerry?"

"Oh, I'm fucking going to gaol, darlin'. Even my three-grand-an-hour wanker of a lawyer isn't changing that turd shaped factoid."

"Yes, that's what I'd assumed, actually."

"Aren't you even goin' t' ask if I did it?"

"No. No, I'm not." Her gaze is trained fixedly on his condiments now. "Because if you did it then I actually will fucking kill you and if you didn't then I'll have such a breakdown over the injustice of the legal system that I won't be able to cope. And if you did I don't fucking want to be here and for some reason I actually _do_ want to be here, so let's just leave it, okay? And just _by the way_ part of me doesn't care either way because my fucking _god_, Malcolm, the kind of karma you must have been accumulating over the last seventeen years was bound to catch up with you at some point so maybe you just have to take this. This parmesan is like fucking sand."

Nicola tips her hand and lets the solid little grains of now very dry cheese tumble to the floor, brushing her fingers over her palm to rid it of the last few granules.

Malcolm studies the former Leader of the Opposition silently, processing her comments. A few days ago she was the alternate Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. A few weeks before that, he was still trying to work out how to get her there. Professionally Malcolm feels no guilt at affecting her destruction. Personally something clenches in the pit of his stomach when he thinks about what life would have been like had she actually managed to get there - if _he_ had actually managed to get her there. Of course it's nonsense to think that she ever could have led the fucking nation. Jesus, Malcolm's never even seen her lead a body of staff for fuck's sake, but the part of him that has a tiny glimmer of personal regard for her, the part of him that doesn't hate having her here in his kitchen to make sure he doesn't drop dead from hunger, that part likes to think she would have stepped up to the job. And if she had managed to step up to the job, then he has robbed her of something.

While he's considering all this, Nicola's hand closes around a jar of tomatoes. "Thank fuck," the brunette mumbles almost inaudibly. In her younger days she was well adept at tossing pasta together from basically nothing on those rare occasions when there was a cock up booking a babysitter and she would have to rush home to feed the children, but there was no promise whatsoever in buttered linguini. Malcolm doesn't even seem to possess a lemon that isn't more mould than skin at this point.

Thankfully, Malcolm's passion for curry means he has a well stocked spice rack, so Nicola is able to locate enough fillers to make what is now effectively going to be linguini tossed in butter with lightly sautéed tomatoes at least vaguely interesting in flavour.

Malcolm watches as she stirs an assortment of herbs and spices through the makeshift sauce she's creating. He's surprised that she has any sense of complementary flavours; she has always seemed to be someone with no instinct or predilection for cooking whatsoever. It's not like he's tasted it yet, of course. It may well be as much of a fiasco as everything else Nicola Murray turns her hand to. In fact, he's not sure why he gave her the benefit of the doubt in the first place. It's something he's found himself doing over and over again over the past few years, and it never ends with him pleasantly surprised.

"Could you get me some bowls, or would that be too much to ask?" Her tone is dripping with disdain. She is still grappling with how much of her anger she's allowed to work through tonight versus how much time she should spend being supportive. She is worried for him, despite her best efforts not to be, but her fury refuses to be totally dismissed. It's an odd mix of emotions for Nicola. She is used to being angry at the males in her life, used to being disappointed by them, but somehow this has hit her harder than anything before. Harder than the metric fuck-ton of lies James has dumped on her over the years, and that's something that concerns her deeply. What concerns her more is that she's reasonably convinced that the underlying reason for it is the simple fact of trust. Regardless of a long and complicated professional history, Nicola has always trusted Malcolm. She doesn't always agree with him, can't always justify him, but she trusts him. Having him betray her so thoroughly and easily was utterly devastating.

His eyes bore into her back, but whether she can feel them or not he is unsure. She fishes a teaspoon from the drawer to her right, and he watches her tongue flit out to catch a drop of sauce before it falls to the bench. Maybe it's because he's overtired (more so than usual), and he's probably going to gaol, and his entire life is basically fucked - maybe it's because all the people in the wider world or just the people in _his_ wider world have totally abandoned him, but for some reason, Malcolm can't help thinking that Nicola Murray is not a totally unwelcome presence in his kitchen. In fact, he's finding Nicola's invasion quite comforting. But, god, she pisses him off. How fucking dare she barge in here and fucking feed him like he's an infant? And why is his treacherous brain reminding him of useless facts about how she felt underneath him that night at Conference, how her tongue was wicked even when she was trolleyed. It's been years since Luce left and it's been almost that long since he really stopped to care, but every now and then that night at Conference still pops into his head. Every now and then he remembers how long it's been since he's had a mojito.

Silently Malcolm ghosts up behind her, reaching for the bowls in the cupboard above her head and to the right. While he does so, his left hand trails down her waist and over the arse has so admired for all these years. Nicola tenses under his hand and spins in his grasp. Malcolm manages to set the bowls down to his right before Nicola knocks them from his hand with her sudden movement.

Nicola's eyes, well known to be malleable in colour, are currently blazing green; indignant, confused. Malcolm does not smile as he runs his hand down her leg and attempts to hook her knee around his hips. Before Nicola can quite work out what's happening, Malcolm is bending his head and dropping his lips to hers. He is not smiling, there is not the levity of the last occasion. The first time they kiss when they are both sober, each wishes they'd had rather a lot to drink.

Nicola's brain is normally a swirling mess of fire trucks trying to get around a traffic jam, but right now there are police cars and ambulances thrown into the mix too. Half of her is screaming that this is Malcolm Fucking Tucker, the man who has just completely fucked over her career and basically her life, while the other half is caught in a vicious loop of _oh-god-hands-mouth-fingers-Malcolm-oh-god-hands-mouth-fingers-Malcolm. _She is seething with rage at everything about him, at the mere fact of his existence. She has exhausted herself with hating him, which is perhaps the only reason she found it within herself to come here tonight. She is still trying and failing to process the events of the last eight days, and having Malcolm Tucker's tongue invading her mouth is really not helping her in this endeavour. Since that night all those years ago Malcolm has pondered in his rare idle moments what she might taste like when she hasn't spent the night ingesting rum like it's oxygen. Even though this is definitely not the circumstances he expected to surround such a discovery, Malcolm is comforted to find that she tastes exactly how he's always imagined she would. She tastes like an omnishambolic frump he finds inexplicably endearing. She tastes exactly as she should, and for no reason Malcolm is glad she does; it seems fitting that at least something in the last fortnight has been at least vaguely predictable. Malcolm's free hand caresses her cheek, her hair which he has so often professed a fondness for. His eyes slip open again, attempting to take in her face at such close range. Her name falls from his lips, a gentle "Nic'la" laced with a kind of exhausted longing, and the sound of it finally breaks Nicola's cycle of _Get Malcolm The Fuck Off You_ versus _Oh Fucking God, Malcolm, Yes_. Her hands fall from his face (and oh god, when did she put her hands on his face?) and push him from her by his hips. Nicola wishes she had the ability to summon some kind of coherent words, but she does not. She is too busy trying to decide why her heart is pounding and the taste in her mouth is so intoxicating to do so. Almost instantly Malcolm misses the warmth of her body against his, the feel of her leg under his fingers, but he can't say he's really surprised. After all, this is not the first time Nicola Murray has run wordlessly from him at a significant moment.

Calmly, Malcolm turns off the stove, drains the pasta, and dumps it unceremoniously in a bowl. There's no point in letting it go to waste now and he is rarely a man to turn down a free meal. For the first time since his testimony at the Inquiry, Malcolm Tucker's head is not filled with the spectacular shards of his once brilliant career; it is filled with every tiny detail of Nicola Murray he has absorbed this night. Malcolm muses over the temperature of her body and the texture of her hair, the smell of her skin and the taste of her mouth while he picks idly at the pasta she's made. In accordance with his earlier contention, she does have a sense of complementary flavours, and for no reason this makes the ghost of a smile touch his lips.

Malcolm will spend years trying to replicate this pasta. He can never quite get the balance between oregano, turmeric, and chilli right, but he is content to undertake his culinary experiments in the hope of recreation. Years later, when he first pushes a spoonful under Nicola's nose and asks for her opinion on the accuracy of his recipe, he is rudely informed that she has "no fucking idea, because you decided to fucking kiss me. I only had a teaspoon of it."

Even if the memory of the pasta becomes hazy and imprecise as time strides past while him juggling two mobile phones, Malcolm can always rely on Nicola Murray's mouth tasting of her own special brand of omnishambles. He will always take some comfort in this fact.


	4. Courage To Act Against Expert Advice

**4. **

**"A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice."**

Tonight exists before the long intervening period in which Malcolm Tucker and Nicola Murray kiss each other in secret, but after the prevailing episode in which they have no contact at all. Somewhere between these two points, the two of them develop the kind of companionable acquaintance they were always dimly aware they could have but were both too busy trying to avoid their own destruction and perhaps affect the other's to achieve.

It's easy. Easier than it should have been. Easier than either is comfortable with it being. They do simple things together now that he's out of gaol. They share meals and have very serious and competitive Scrabble and chess wars. Every now and then Malcolm comes to the football with her because she can't come at the thought of going alone with the boys but also refuses to let James be the only one who has any fun with them. This is one of the few things they have done in public; generally they tend towards simplicity, privacy. They attempt to build their relationship as it could have been from the start: one based on a similar sense of humour and an ability to push each other's buttons; for the most part it goes quite smoothly. They learn not to leap to verbal warfare at the first sign of tension, and once they've negotiated this boundary everything becomes slightly less shouty and combative. Things are, of course, still relatively shouty and combative, they are still Nicola and Malcolm after all, but things take on a more even keel, and this makes civilian friendship somewhat easier.

Tonight they have convened their meeting at Nicola's house, and even though she had been intending to cook, Malcolm had quickly shooed her out of the kitchen when she'd almost mistaken cinnamon sugar for ground cardamom. While Malcolm once acknowledged that she has some instinct for complementary flavours, all cooking abilities evade her when she has spent the week locked in a manifesto review committee and is almost dead with boredom. Normally Nicola would have hovered while he cooked, freshening drinks and doing odd jobs like selecting spices. Tonight Malcolm has banished her from her own kitchen on firm instructions that she needs to put on some clothes that aren't so tight she can't breathe. After a grumbled rebuttal that she absolutely _could_ breathe in her neat charcoal dress she had obeyed him, silently padding off to her bedroom to change.

Tonight is entirely different to the first time she cooked him dinner, just after the fallout from the Goolding Inquiry. Now there is a casual ease between them in which Nicola takes a substantial amount of comfort.

When she returns to the kitchen she slides onto the counter and takes up the glass of wine she abandoned earlier. Instead of donning pyjama bottoms as he'd expected, she's pulled on a soft skirt and a flowy aubergine cardigan, which she tucks around herself absently. Her legs are sheathed in tights, and the dark black fabric is a stark contrast against her cream marble bench. Malcolm is in one of his amusingly snuggly fleeces and a pair of trousers, and Nicola can't help wondering whether he's hot, standing over the stove. One day when she settles on a bench beside him while he cooks he will reach over and touch her knee affectionately; today he simply sweeps his eyes over her stocking clad legs and notes the way she leans her head back against the cupboard, lets her mouth hang slightly agape and looks as if she may well fall asleep right there on the bench.

"So, tell me about your Party Approved Wankfest." Malcolm instructs her.

"Hmm? Oh it was..." she searches for a word. "Fucking exhausting, actually. I'm genuinely concerned that the new team might be suffering from some kind of mental infirmity. And Ollie sat there sulking, watching Henry do all these 'how to better communicate' exercises that I swear must have somehow come from Stewart Pearson. No one else at this level is quite so touchy-feely without being a total sociopath like Flemming." Malcolm snorts a laugh, glancing between her and the meal he's preparing.

"How's Miller copin'?"

"Now that Chris is leader? Oh god, terribly. I mean, I have four children who, let's face it, weren't fantastically well behaved in their formative years - "

"Or so you've been told." Malcolm snipes quietly, earning a gentle kick from the brunette on the bench.

"And I've never seen such a sustained passive aggressive tantrum in my life."

"Oh, Danny Boy..." The Scot sighs. He's never liked Dan Miller as far as he could throw him, even if he's always recognised that the unctuous little shit is exactly what a Communications Director could want in a Leader. Someone with no background but for politics, no past, no awkward nights in strip clubs. Dan is and always has been totally Teflon coated; while Malcolm recognises this about him, he has never been able to find any personal regard for the brown nosing little arse-clown.

"How do you find him?"

"Chris? Um, good actually." Nicola combs her hair with her fingers while she says it and frowns thoughtfully. She sips at her vintage red wine before elaborating. "I mean, look. He's not as strong on policy as Tom, but I think he's less isolating in terms of personality than Dan, so you've sort of got the best of both worlds in some ways. And I mean he's not... rubbish at policy. People like him. When we've been at events he gets approached with this kind of genuine enthusiasm, like people want to know him as a person rather than get a photo with some prick who might run the country eventually."

Malcolm nods, familiar with such sentiments from the public. His issue with Nicola was always that the public were happy to get to know her as a person, but terrified of the idea of her running the country. He casts a glance up to Nicola's face and catches a glimmer of something that would have concerned him in their professional relationship, but as a friend only mildly amuses him.

Digging a bony elbow into her knee Malcolm mumbles "Out with it, Nic'la."

"What?" At once she is all wide-eyed innocence, and Malcolm quite likes her like this: easy and casual and just a little combative. He likes having her in reach as well, even though he would never articulate this, and would only in very specific circumstances actually reach for her.

"You've got that 'gunning fer Deputy' glimmer in your eye."

Nicola folds one arm over her chest and raises her wine glass to her lips with the other. "Would that be so bad? I mean, before you start, I've learnt a lot since... everything."

Malcolm nods. He doesn't want to get into this with her now. He wants to gossip about the failures of his former co-workers and toast her current successes, even if they are largely because the Secretary of State for Justice is as useful as woollen underwear on John Barrowman. He does not want to war-game her career as if he is still one of her advisers, and in truth, this is the last thing Nicola wants to spend tonight discussing. Suddenly the air between them becomes charged and Nicola changes tack. "Not until after the election and well into the next term, anyway. Long term goal." She thinks about touching his leg with her foot gently, something to alleviate the unwelcome modicum of awkwardness that's come between them. She refrains, thinking it too intimate for people in their situation, people with their history.

Feeling released from that particular thread of conversation Malcolm asks "Are yeh still eyein' off the Foreign Office?"

Nicola shifts her gaze and focuses on a point on the wall opposite her. "Actually, Justice has made me realise that... I mean, Foreign Secretary is one of the glamorous jobs, isn't it? You get to get all over the world - "

"Not great for My Little Claustrophobe over here."

Were Nicola less familiar with Malcolm's propensity to nickname her after popular culture, particularly children's programmes, she would have taken his statement to indicate a kind of intimate possession. Nicola will not voice it at any point, but she would not actually object to this.

"And obviously the idea of jetting around and having bilateral meetings with world leaders is appealing, but... You're going to laugh when I say this, but I actually miss - "

"For the love of fuck, don't say DoSAC."

"Well, not _actually_ DoSAC, but, yknow. Being able to do things that had some kind of practical outcome for the average person. I mean no one gives a shit if we have a good relationship with Frank-Walter Steinmeier, do they, really? Not until something goes wrong, anyway."

The glance Malcolm shoots at her is contemplative; he is still a little surprised when she says anything insightful about politics or her perceptions of her place in it. He is still surprised at how much she wants to make a difference.

"So what, then?" He asks, turning off the various appliances he's used to finish the meal. Nicola is sitting on his right hand side blocking a power point, and while he reaches past her for it he tips his right hand so it is parallel to her body, his thumb towards the bench, and caresses her hip on his way past. Nicola takes this as the sign to dismount the bench it is, but remains put, trying not to focus on the fact that she likes when he touches her; part of her always has. Once his hand is back on a pair of tongs she slides off the bench and begins gathering plates and cutlery. Malcolm takes a moment to study the curves of her arse as she bends to retrieve wanky cream Ecology linen textured plates which he can't stand. There's nothing actually wrong with them, he'd just felt like picking a fight with her when he first saw them and can't go back on his disdain now. Her arse, on the other hand, is something he's consistently approved of for the duration of their acquaintance, even when he has utterly despised everything else about her.

"I'm not sure. Chris has left things reasonably open to me, if we win." She says, picking up a conversation he'd almost totally forgotten while pondering the brunette's anatomy.

"You can't go back to DoSAC. You know that, righ'?"

"Of course I fucking know that, Malcolm. I'm not a brain damaged parakeet." Malcolm's quirked eyebrow is a clear articulation that he thinks she may well be, and she seriously considers hitting him for his insinuation. "But you know, in hindsight I do miss it there a bit. I mean, it'll always be my first Department, won't it? I feel like I'm going to end up popping in for visits when I'm old and decrepit."

"Well phone ahead, darlin', because I don't think the Tories'll like yeh just bargin' in next week."

"I was thinking Health actually." She replies. The fact that she has learnt to simply ignore his barbs tells him a great deal about the state of their friendship, and it scares him. She should not be this comfortable with him. He should not want her to be.

"Health Secretary?" He repeats, studying her face carefully. Malcolm actually finds, when he scrolls through the many reasons this shouldn't work that, actually, it does. She can exercise her inclinations for social justice in a portfolio that has a real budget dedicated to it, that is well staffed with a wide range of experts to consult. This isn't something she'd be totally on her own in doing. She might even have a chance of being good. He doesn't remember reading an interview with her where she didn't profess her passionate love for the NHS, nor can he recall a caucus or later Cabinet meeting where she did not vociferously oppose any spending cuts on health, or changes she felt would be detrimental. No, this is a very different proposition indeed to tossing her into a Department that no one even really understands. This is something that perhaps even Nicola Murray can manage to not fuck up. Or possibly fuck up so badly that there would be a new pandemic as a result of her stewardship, but for no good reason Malcolm is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

He speaks with that soft and genuine tone which is so rare but so pleasant when it pops its head up. "I think that's a really nice fit, actually." Malcolm replies, and some part of Nicola feels better for his support. Not in a Maybe-The-Communications-Director-Won't-Kill-Me-Now sense, but in a Nicola-Murray-Is-Glad-Of-Malcolm-Tucker's-Support sense. This is possibly even more worrisome.

They settle into their meals and fall into an easy conversation, and no one observing the scene would believe that for a time, each managed to affect the other's downfall.

When the pair is sitting and chatting idly in Nicola's lounge room post-meal, Malcolm's phone begins buzzing insistently. Their eyes travel to the little device and Malcolm waves his hand dismissively; this miniscule gesture says everything that can be said about the shift in Malcolm's priorities, his attitude. His eyes don't even drop from her when it begins buzzing a second time, and again, Nicola is glad to see his ability to separate from work. The third call tells Malcolm something is genuinely wrong. "Fellate the fucking pharaoh, can no one manage their own shittin' problems? Sorry."

"No, it's fine. Take it. Fix whatever fiasco there is at the firm." Nicola says, shaking out her hair and standing. She feels slightly less close to death after eating, and because of this decides to do the dishes while she has the energy.

"It's a fuckin' Friday night, William. Someone had better be haemorrhaging on live television." A light smile touches Nicola's lips. A complaint about working on a Friday night from a man who basically hadn't had a day off for a decade until he was fired. Wonders will clearly never cease.

Nicola finds there is something oddly soothing about the occasional Scottish accented expletive floating into the kitchen while she does the dishes, and instantly wishes this thought had never occurred to her. His swearing subsides before she finishes the washing up, and she wonders if he is typing something on his BlackBerry or if he is planning to join her at some point, hover around and niggle at her as she does the dishes. He does not join her at any point, though, and Nicola refuses to acknowledge that she would rather like him to. When she pads back into the lounge room she finds the Scot asleep on her couch, his hand clutching his BlackBerry to his chest. A fond smile touches the corner of Nicola's lips and she prizes the device from his fingers as gently as she can. She flicks its vibrate setting off so it doesn't disturb him overnight, and retrieves a throw rug to tuck around him. She gets half way through covering him when the pull of his fleece becomes irresistible. It is exactly as soft and snuggly as it has always looked, and Nicola, after a week trapped in a godforsaken retreat with her Parliamentary colleagues, is unable to resist the simple notion of sleeping against another living being. Reaching over to flick off the standing lamp Nicola slides beneath the throw rug and curls her body against Malcolm's, smiling to herself at the familiar smell of him. In a moment marked by the kind of privacy one assumes one has when the other party is deeply asleep, Nicola presses a gentle kiss to his cheek; she does so in such a way that her mouth covers half of his. When her tongue flicks over her lips as she settles her head back on his shoulder she finds beneath the hints of dinner and reasonably nice merlot, there is something uniquely Malcolm Tucker on her lips. She has not tasted it since he shoved her against his joinery and she proceeded to bolt from his house.

The first time Nicola kisses Malcolm while she is sober she realises that, not only has she missed the taste of Malcolm Tucker on her lips, but, actually, she would quite like to kiss him on a regular basis.


	5. Pro Having It & Pro Eating It

AN: So, lovely people. I actually have had a bit of trouble letting this story go, but I suppose it's better that I send it off into the universe than sit here while I pretend it isn't finished.

The chapter title is Boris Johnson's. The characters are Armando's, and I for one am very grateful to him for inventing them in all their brilliance.

I hope you enjoy this chapter. This chapter is quite a long way in the future, but even so I hope they're satisfactorily in character. Thank you to everyone who's read this story, especially those who've reviewed and left kudos. I genuinely appreciate it.

Now I'll let you jolly on with the show.

* * *

**_5._**

**_"My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it."_**

The first time they kiss in public, it is Nicola's Birthday. Long after the dust of the Goolding fiasco has settled and Malcolm is out of gaol, the Scot takes it upon himself to help organise Nicola's office Birthday do. It's nothing exceptional, just a cake and a bottle of champagne with her staff (a new bunch who actually have some policy credentials and a sense of loyalty). While a loyal staff body once would have made Malcolm's job immeasurably more difficult, now, as someone observing from the sidelines from the perspective of person-who-loves-Nicola-Murray, this suits him far better. On top of that, if any of them ever made the mistake of crossing her, Malcolm would be storming the building with a hurricane of expletives faster than a Japanese bullet train. While he would never tell Nicola this, he has the irritating suspicion that she knows it anyway.

Malcolm spends far too long on the phone to her diary secretary trying to establish when she's free between appointments that day, and eventually he has forty minutes carved out between a meeting at NHS head office and a BBC interview that evening. Much to everyone's surprise, Malcolm is quite particular about the running of the event, and not only in a psychotic micromanager sense, in an 'I genuinely care how this goes' sense. And he does care. Malcolm Tucker, despite his best efforts has come to care deeply about these kinds of trivial, nonsensical events. His own Birthday used to be spent working without the faintest idea of celebrating. The rare occasions when the event was actually acknowledged, Malcolm had always been the least willing participant in events, but after years of four miniature Murrays plus the Queen of All Birthday Celebrations herself, Malcolm has come to respect that they are important, at the very least to his other half. A part of him has even begun to grudgingly enjoy them.

So now, the man who spent his fiftieth Birthday listening to Nicola doing a radio interview and eating cunt cake is faffing about with the placement of an elaborate purple creation on his partner's desk, critically considering its positioning as if the future of the United Kingdom's health system depends on how aesthetically pleasing his cake placement is rather than how astute the policy decisions taken by his Secretary of State for Health partner, her Department, and her horde of advisers are.

After deciding that, yes, in the centre is fine, just as Malcolm first suspected, Nicola sweeps into Richmond House, relaying the finer points of one of the Departmental Secretaries regaling in vivid detail how she was recently vomited on while at a hospital photo shoot, with a full colour description, while Nicola herself had tried to keep from retching at the thought and somehow keep the meeting in hand. Malcolm smirks to himself as he listens to her breezing down the hall, making a beeline for her office, doubtless so she can kick her shoes off and swap into her trainers. He is sitting in her chair with a light smile playing about his lips, trying very hard not to find her more endearing than usual when she is absently thrusting coats at staff, and raging about how "If I'd wanted to spend my life being vomited on I would've been a fucking doctor. Or I would have taken some fucking time off to raise my children and let them vomit on me. I'm the sodding Health Secretary for fu- "

Her eyes fall on Malcolm first, smirking contentedly in her chair with that quietly victorious sparkle in his eye. That little glimmer used to terrify her, used to signify he was going to outwit and ruin her all at once; now it usually just turns her on.

"Hello! I didn't know you were - did we have dinner planned or something?" She is frowning deeply, and Malcolm cannot contain his amusement at the fact that she still hasn't noticed the lavish lavender coloured cake sitting proudly in the middle of her desk.

"No."

"Oh. So you just decided to surprise me at work?" Her tone is dubious, like she thinks he is planning to do something horrible, like she's worried he's going to break bad news. As amusing as it is, Malcolm is also a little worried about how well she's going to survive her interview if she can't even deduce that it's her Birthday.

"Thought I'd pay tribute to the reigning Queen of the NHS."

Nicola's face clouds with a low degree of irritation now. "Alright, what's going on? Gillian? Do you have any idea why my deranged other half is - "

"Wishin' yeh a Happy Birthday?" Malcolm smirks, dropping is gaze to the cake and watching Nicola's face spiral through irritation, confusion and finally gratitude before she glances back up at him.

Malcolm lifts a hand and waves in a cohort of Nicola's staff. Gillian, Mitchell, Chris and Cathy (her main advisers and also her favourites) enter with some degree of trepidation. They have all come into contact with Malcolm at various points in their lives or careers, but this iteration of Malcolm is still foreign and terrifying to them. Gillian is carrying a handful of champagne glasses while Mitch is fumbling to get the foil off the top of the bottle. Malcolm really would like to tell him to hand it the fuck over and let a real man deal with the alcohol, but he refrains for the sake of civility, and in the end Cathy wrenches it from his hand and does the honours herself. Malcolm respects a woman who knows her way around a bottle of champagne.

Liz, her Departmental Press Officer (so much better than Terri and Robyn that Nicola almost wept when they first met) is still on the phone, and holds up her hand and shrugs at her boss apologetically. Andy, her Departmental Liaison is passing notes with Liz and frantically trying to hear the full conversation by pressing his ear to the other side of the phone. He is arguably the only one of Nicola's staff prone to real stress, and this, given Nicola's own propensity for panic, is a very good thing. One staffer who goes to pieces under pressure, that she can handle. A whole office full and she is no longer capable of functioning herself.

"Happy Birthday, Nicola." Gilly says after setting the glasses carefully on the desk, righting herself and embracing her boss tenderly. Malcolm leaves the staff to fuss over her, happy to observe the situation. Her advisers have bought her an expensive engraved pen which reads 'HRH Nicola Murray, Queen of the NHS', and the delight on her face is infectious. Malcolm ponders the importance of staff selection; beyond being competent, they share a level of tactility, of intimacy that Nicola seeks in friendships and obviously appreciates in her staff. Cathy touches her boss' hair, Nicola rubs Chris' shoulder absently. It's almost too much for the Scot to bear, and makes him wonder whether she's been right all along about his desire for conflict in politics. Either way, this office seems far too functional for Malcolm's taste, and it's concerning him.

Once they're done fawning and are contentedly sipping champagne, Malcolm rises from his partner's chair and crosses around her desk.

"Oh my god, what am I like? I forgot my own Birthday." She mumbles. "I love my Birthday."

The Scot laughs through his nose. "I know, pet."

"No, I mean I actually forgot my own - "

"Yeah, but I didn't."

"I've finally trained you to do something that benefits me." She teases prodding him in the chest before lightly fingering his red silk tie.

"Shut up and make a wish." Malcolm instructs, pointing her to the cake, which is now blazing with candles that Cathy has been patiently lighting.

Liz makes it into the office just in time to stay Nicola extinguishing her candles with Andy trotting closely at her heels.

"Shagging." Malcolm mumbles into Nicola's ear upon observing the pair, and the look she shoots him would dehydrate a cactus.

"Sorry, Nicola!" Liz says breathlessly, crushing the brunette in her arms and almost knocking her own glasses off in the process.

"That's fine, darling. Someone needs to be working in here, don't they? Malcolm don't say a word or I will hurt you." The Scot holds up his hands innocently. Andy pecks Nicola's cheek, trying to avoid Liz, whose arm is still draped casually around Nicola's waist. The warmth in the office is foreign to Malcolm. Political staffers are never this selflessly attached to their Ministers, are they? Or was that just part of the culture under his reign as Director of Communications? He doesn't much like the thought that he was a large part of the reason so many of the Ministers had such hostile, suspicious relationships with their staff. Surely that can't be all down to him, can it? He wants to ask her about it one day, but he is afraid of the answer she will give.

"This is very sweet everyone. I'm probably getting a bit old for all the fanfare, but - "

"You're getting a bit old for a lot of things, but you still muddle through them." Malcolm observes. Were they not in public he would have settled his hand firmly on her arse. Were they not in public she probably would have elbowed him in the solar plexus.

"But I appreciate it, is what I was going to say. Now I should probably" a gesture to the cake "before we end up with wax everywhere." She tucks her hair back and blows out her candles, trying to keep the fact that she is so utterly humbled by the affection in the room from showing on her face. After a long time in politics, Nicola had resigned herself to never having truly loyal staff, yet in the period since losing government, winning back government and being returned to Cabinet, Nicola has stumbled upon a glorious group of staff. She still struggles to believe it's real quite often.

"Also, while we're all here, I'd just like to say you are far and away the best staff I've ever had, and I appreciate you all so much. I love working with you."

"Just fer the rec'rd, though, all her other staff have been truly shit. It's not a massive complement."

"Malcolm!" She snaps. "Could you please shut the fuck up and let me say something nice to my staff? I know it's a foreign concept to you but I try to be an actual person. Okay? Good. Thank you." At no point in this speech does she give him the chance to respond. Nicola hesitates for a moment trying to gather her thoughts. "... That was actually all I had. Slightly less positive with the partner related swearing in the middle. So, anyway, thank you all!" She is hugged again by her staff, this time in more of a dog-pile-on-Nicola manner than before, then delegates the cutting of the cake to someone else and turns into Malcolm's arms.

"Happy Birthday, darlin'." He mumbles, brushing long, competent fingers over her cheek and through her hair.

"Thank you." The Scot shrugs, and she tangles her fingers with his. "No really, thank you. I know you're a colossal shit, but I really appreciate this."

"Yeah, well, if I'm not nice to yeh at least once a year you might leave, mightn't yeh?"

"You're quite passable quite often, really." Nicola counters, her smirk only two shades away from taunting. Malcolm's voice drops into its most dangerous tone. "Are you tryin' to ruin my fucking reputation?"

The brunette's eyes sparkle wickedly as she mumbles "I absolutely am" before leaning up and kissing him lingeringly. One of her staff (Chris probably; it's always Chris) wolf whistles at the pair, and Malcolm calmly flips the younger man off. His arm then curls back around Nicola and pulls her body tightly against his. They are a mash of expensive suiting and warm bodies that are inaccessible through said suiting. Nicola is very much looking forward to chasing his black Hugo Boss suit down his arms once she gets him home tonight.

Despite the cold harshness of the words that usually spill from it, Malcolm's mouth is inviting and warm. When not forming words, Malcolm's mouth is pleasing and considerate. However, while his tongue is teasing hers, Nicola detects an entirely foreign flavour and a frown pulls across her face.

"Have you been eating my fucking cake?" She demands, pulling back from him too fast for his liking.

"What are you talking about, woman?"

"You taste like icing. You taste, to be specific, like French vanilla icing with honey in it."

"Hallucinating yer favourite icing flavour is a sign of brain tumour, pet. You migh' want to get that checked out. Presents more in people of a certain age, too, I'd expect."

Nicola casts her eyes towards the cake again and this time notices a heart in the surface that looks suspiciously like it's been drawn by someone's finger.

"You're fucking hopeless." Nicola comments, thumping him in the chest. Even though she's hit him hard, no one could deny that the action was affectionate. Or perhaps more accurately that she still feels affection towards him even when physically abusing him.

"Was one of you lot recordin' that? Because I think the Daily Mail might be interested in that. Headline material, righ' there; 'Senior Cabinet Minister Assaults Former Adviser'."

"Oh fuck off, Malcolm." Nicola smiles, feeling his hand brushing over her waistline as she turns to take the proffered piece of cake.

"Shit, should I be eating this?" Nicola asks around a mouthful of cake. An almost imperceptible noise of sheer bliss had escaped the back of her throat when the cake had first touched her tongue, and Malcolm's only means of concealing his smile had been to fold his arms over his chest and inspect the tips of his shoes. There is no possible way anyone is wrestling that cake off her short of causing her some kind of grievous bodily injury. Beyond that, Malcolm doesn't have the heart to rob her of what seems to be the highlight of her day, and it seems no member of her staff does either.

"I mean, this is probably going to make me claggy, isn't it? What if I split my dress on live television? I mean it's the fucking BBC, no one will be watching anyway, will they?"

"We have this wonderful invention called 'The Internet', Nic'la. Fuck, you in a burstin' dress would have Ben Swain hate-wanking until his hands were bloodied fucking stumps. Just stumps." Malcolm drawls, a sinful sparkle in his blue eyes. Nicola tips her head and glares at her partner. "Just eat yer fucking cake." The brunette doesn't need to be told twice.

While Malcolm is Antoinette-esq in his contention that everyone must let her eat her cake, when Chris leans over with a glass of champagne however, the Scot is quick to intercept. "Hey, Mister Ghost of Birthdays Pissed, what in the name of the sadistic fucking televisual gods d'you think you're doing?" The tips of Malcolm's fingers are pressed into Chris' chest, but his tone remains jocular. It's one of the tones that used to unsettle Ollie the most back in the beginning.

"Um... giving my boss a glass of champagne?" Chris is mildly unsettled, but only mildly so. This is one of the main problems with Nicola's staff having such a clear understanding that he holds no real power over them. Malcolm loathes it.

"Chris, as you're aware I live with this lunatic you call a Minister - "

"Malcolm!" She barks, but her heart isn't really in it.

"- But I have no hesitation in telling you that I've seen her do interviews sober..."

"Right. Right."

"Excuse me, Christian, I'd hate for you to forget who hired you."

"What, y'mean Gilly?"

Nicola wants to rail against him, but she is in the unfortunate position of basically having a great deal of respect and affection for all her staff. "Oh... fuck off. And just for the record, Malcolm, I can do an interview after having a glass of champagne."

Malcolm's gaze becomes pointed. "Earlobes."

"Shit. Shit, right, take it away."

Covertly Malcolm touches a kiss to the back of her head as he scoots around her to retrieve his own glass, muttering "I made sure it was a nice one, too." Nicola cannot summon the will to be angry with him for taunting her so even on her Birthday. What very few people in the world know or realise is that Malcolm Tucker is actually quite an affectionate man with the select few people he's decided he likes. He's actually having quite a hard time keeping from spending far too much time touching her right now. His reputation can't really take the further hit, though. Imagine having the Demon Lord of Westminster spending the entire afternoon with his arms curled casually around the former Leader he destroyed; he would be reduced to the proverbial kitten in everyone's minds before he could issue a verbal enema or any sort.

Nicola, her partner, and her staff spend twenty minutes sitting comfortably around her office sharing stories and laughing. Malcolm's arm sporadically curls around her hips, his fingers tease at the base of the zipper at the side of her dress. It is an entirely pleasant occasion until Nicola checks her little gold watch and mumbles "Shit, I have to go." Setting her fork on her plate and casting her gaze to Gillian. Her adviser takes up Nicola's coat and a hefty folder, waiting for her by the door.

Malcolm stands and trails his other half out of her office, fingers settling on the small of her back as he walks her to her car.

"You know, I could come with yeh." Malcolm observes mildly. The Health Secretary turns to him with a patient and affectionate look on her face.

"Don't take this the wrong way, darling, but if I never have to deal with you in a professional context again as long as I live it will still be too fucking soon."

A light smile touches Malcolm's lips. "Fine. Fuck off to the BBC." He takes her by the hips and pulls her forward until they are flush against his, until she is close enough for him to kiss her. "Just make sure you come home. No running off with Paxman."

"I won't if you make sure there's cake at home."

"Depends if it's eaten itself." The Scot quips, squeezing Nicola's hand briefly before she slides into her mid-range government saloon.

* * *

Malcolm Tucker is a man who knows his partner well enough to have purchased two cakes and secreted one in their fridge. Because of this, there is an ample supply of cake awaiting Nicola when she returns, and she is very grateful. It's not that her interview was bad, per se, it's merely that Paxman is 'the daddy', as Malcolm would put it, and she feels like she has been absolutely through the wringer.

The first thing she hears when she enters is a familiar Scottish accent remarking "Gilly said you had a sandwich at the Beeb." She follows the sound of it and finds him reclining on the couch with a laptop on his knee, tapping away at a communications plan for one of his clients. Nicola settles her fingers on his shoulders and begins rubbing little circles at the base of his neck. The pausing of his hands over his keyboard is all Nicola needs to tell her that she has found a very good spot indeed. Her fingers trail lightly through his hair before Nicola drops to her knees behind him, folds her arms over the arm of the couch and peers over his shoulder. She can feel him resisting the urge to mumble "Just four more lines, pet," and frankly she would not stand for it if he did. Their lives are a series of just-four-more-lines, just-checking-this-speech, let-me-memorise-these-stats-quickly, and because of this significant dates are observed under military-style orders. Her intention had been to gauge whose communication strategy was important enough that Malcolm had not snapped his computer shut as soon as he'd heard the door close, but she is distracted by the nearness of him, and turns her head slightly to the left to inhale the illustrious scent of him. His smell is warm and enticing, and sends a familiar stab of longing straight to her abdomen. She is about to kiss his neck in such a way that he will be rendered unable to continue working, but a name catches her attention out of the corner of her eye, and suddenly she is demanding "You are absolutely not fucking writing a communications strategy for Simon Cowell." It's an accusation, a demand of how he could possibly have neglected to tell her such a piece of information.

"I am absolutely fucking not. Ten points to the Minister." He taps out another sentence quickly, and she can see what he's trying to do: delay her until he has completed his task.

"Then you have a thirty page document with the words 'Simon Cowell' in the footer because...?"

"Because he has a net worth of two hundred and fifty million quid and an annual salary of fifty six mill all from being an arrogant monkey-fucking cunt. I mean, he can buy an' sell Clarkson four times over for only a minor increase in cuntery. It's a solid communications model, Nic'la."

Nicola laughs softly to herself and rests her head on his shoulder, letting the tension of her interview ebb away from her and a different tension entirely overtake her.

"Yeh handled yerself with Paxman," Malcolm observes, still typing. Nicola is willing to give him two more minutes before she slams the screen shut on his fingers. Of course she would not, in actuality, do such a thing. Malcolm Tucker's fingers are a vital factor in her overall state of satisfaction in life, and she would damage them at her own peril.

"Oh god, except for the part where he asked whether I'd take my children to any hospital in the country and then started listing the worst performing hospitals and all the diseases - "

"Shut up, yeh daft bint, that was actually one of yer best answers."

"Oh. Did I say something clever to that? I got distracted thinking about Ella getting golden staph and - "

Malcolm presses a button on the remote control; the television awakes from standby and Nicola's face fills the screen. He feels her wince, but smirks to himself as he continues to type.

" - Obviously everyone wants to be able to take their family to the best medical facilities available. Overall, the United Kingdom is a world-leader in health services, but I'm very mindful of the - of the need to ensure that every hospital, every doctors' surgery, every emergency department is up to scratch. Under the previous Government, health funding was absolutely eviscerated - "

"That's a strong word, Minister."

"It was a disgraceful thing to do. So I'm committed to ensuring that every one of our medical facilities is well funded - " Malcolm clicks off the television mid way through her sentence, and only now does she notice his laptop is gone from his lap.

"It was a fucking brilliant answer, actually." He smirks, glasses perched on his nose.

"How did you know I would - ?"

"Because I fucking live with you, Nic'la. Half the time I know what's going on in that shiny little, rainbow-vomiting-unicorn filled mind of yers better than you do."

"Well then I hope you're aware that right now I'm thinking a) how sad I am you've already taken off my favourite tie, and b)" her hand snakes down his chest and her fingers dip between the buttons of his shirt to brush his bare skin, her breath is hot against his ear, "if you don't come upstairs with me right now I can't be held responsible for my actions."

Malcolm does not need to be told twice, and soon his only thoughts are 'fucking side zippers' and 'thank fucking god for stay up stockings'. Any thoughts of Jeremys, be they Paxmans or Clarksons, are long forgotten by Nicola, and she is, as always, very, very glad she has left Malcolm's hands intact.

* * *

While Nicola is still attempting to rebuild herself from the shattered mess Malcolm has made her, the Scot has already regained both his composure, and his power of speech. "D'you want cake?" He askes, sweeping his eyes over Nicola's superbly unfurled body, her still trembling fingers. Dark eyes with blown pupils meet his and Malcolm is physically incapable of restraining himself. He leans over and kisses her, pleased to feel the eagerness of her response. He clambers over her to get out of the bed, and she is bemused by the fact that he is older than her but still has a better recovery rate than she does. She catches his hand when he's off the bed and pulls him back to her, sitting up and kissing him hungrily. "Malcolm, that was - I mean - "

"The best Birthday sex ye've ever had. I know." She laughs softly at him being so fucking cocksure; he kisses her nose then her forehead before slipping off to retrieve the cake. Nicola thinks she probably appreciates his arse as much as he does hers.

The bedding is an irreparable mess, so Malcolm ignores the usual mode of bed sharing and slips beneath the covers at the foot of the bed, legs tangled with Nicola's. He sets the sizeable plate of cake on the empty expanse of bed beside them, but is too distracted to eat it when he notices the goosebumps forming over her breasts and arms. He does nothing to stop them, merely requests that she throws him a pillow. Malcolm tucks this behind his back and watches as Nicola takes a sizeable forkful of cake. His hands close around her right foot and begin gently working the kinks out of it. Between the cake and the massage, Nicola is all but purring with pleasure. Each has an impossibly busy day tomorrow but neither can muster the energy to give half a shit.

"This was perfect, Malcolm." Nicola mumbles, running the toes of her free foot against his leg gratefully. She adjusts the blankets over herself, finally acknowledging the cold her body has obviously been feeling.

"Well, it was." Malcolm retorts around a mouthful of cake with a pointed nod to her now covered breasts.

She smiles lazily at him, "No, really. Thank you."

"Well I love you, don't I? Even if yeh are a dozy fucking bint sometimes. And you love yer Birthday. It's just modus ponendo fucking ponens, isn't it?" Again, the brunette laughs, forking another piece of cake into her mouth and shaking her head.

"At this time of night I have no fucking idea what it is other than your usual modus operandi."

"I feel like there should be an extra fuck in there..." Malcolm comments, still massaging idly at her foot.

"Well, if you insist." Nicola smirks, pushing the cake away and crawling onto Malcolm's lap. The Scot drops his head to her throat, sucking at her pulse point and making her moan before pulling away and looking her steadily in the eye.

"If anyone had told me ten years ago I'd fall in love with you I would have called them clinically insane." Nicola observes, tracing his lips with her fingertips. She swallows and her voice drops to a whisper, as if some part of her still fears the rejection she always expected would go hand in hand with loving Malcolm Tucker. "But I love you so much."

"And I utterly fucking adore you," Malcolm growls, before crashing his lips against hers hard enough to bruise.

Nicola doubts she will ever taste caramel mudcake with French vanilla and honey icing without feeling Malcolm's lips on hers again.


End file.
